As a father of 2 teenagers, a daughter age 19 and a son age 14, this book was both encouraging and frightening.  Perhaps the most striking discovery of the survey work done for the book is the depth of penetration into the American society of moral relativism.  Of the emerging adults interviewed, nearly all expressed some degree of morally relativistic attitude.  Interviewees owned up to many of their moral failings, for example, but were quick to deny having any regrets about their “mistakes.”

Moral relativism and the homogeneous universality of religions are liberal concepts which have taken hold in American society to an extreme degree. Also to the extreme has the notion of diversity as virtue been taken.  Smith rightly points out that “a moral system valuing diversity that begins by valuing everyone’s particular differences somehow ends up devaluing any given particular difference.” (p. 81)  In this sense, diversity is self destructive of it’s own moral underpinning.  This leads to the attitude among emerging adults that religion’s societal value is limited.

To one degree or other, most interviewees felt that religious commitments were items on a menu of intellectual and emotional options that one could rarely be faulted for adopting. They often expressed the conviction, or lack thereof, that religions more or less follow the same patterns, have the same objectives, and worship the same god (p. 145).  The patterns include only being useful in establishing moral compasses in the lives of children.  Objectives tended to follow the lines of helping people become good neighbors and citizens.  With the possible exception of Allah of Islam, who commands people to murder the innocent, the variety of gods of known religions are seen as simply manifestations of the same god through different cultures and people groups.

Since morality in the minds of most emerging adults is relative, it is also subjective and self-evident (pp. 82-83). A moral choice is not guided or limited by any transcendent authority, but rather is informed by the experiences and feelings of the one making the choice.  One need not appeal to anyone or anything for moral authority.  In fact, the idea of moral authority is absurd to many emerging adults.  No one should be able to press his moral imperatives upon another.  But, this is an incoherent position because any system of morality ultimately must necessarily be proscriptive and prescriptive of societal behavior.  Emerging adults are often able to hold competing and incompatible moral views without ever questioning their incongruity.

The second half of Souls in Transition offered some comforting conclusions from its research.  Among them includes the finding that college attendance does not, on the whole, have a negative impact on the religiousness of college students who were highly religious prior to entering college.  This both represents a change in results and dispels a modern myth.  For decades American Christians have assumed that the religiously hostile liberal environment of many colleges had a degrading affect on young Christians entering college.  While this has been true in the past and is still true in a significant percentage of the college population nationally, it does not appear to be true on the whole.

In recent years, there has been a shift that has gone largely unnoticed by many in the Christian community. College campuses more and more have become the target of Christian student ministry efforts, providing a nurturing safe-haven for Christian students entering college.  A push for diversity on college campuses has opened the minds of many to be willing to accept people of different religious faiths.  Attendance at Christian colleges has risen, and the number of Christian colleges has increased.  It appears that the hostility of many liberal academics toward Christians has not waned, but is being counter-balanced by other mitigating factors.

An additional positive conclusion was that the trajectory established prior to and during emerging adult years is usually continued throughout early adulthood.  The scripture “Train a child up in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.” seems to be true not only when children are trained up in Christian values, morals, and ethics, but also when they are not.  The sword cuts both ways.  If children receive a solid Christian foundation in early life, they are highly likely to continue the trajectory into full adulthood.  If children are left to their own religious upbringing with minimal or no religious training from their parents, the more likely they will continue through life as uninterested in religion or even perhaps develop an atheistic worldview.

Further, very disturbing was the conclusion that after age 14, religious conversions generally drop to nearly zero.  Children must be reached for Christ while they have at least two factors in place.  One, they must be reached before they solidify negative attitudes and beliefs about Christianity.  The must be reached while they are young and still willing to learn from their parents and adopt their attitudes and beliefs.  In earlier life, children truly are more impressionable and tend to accept the views of those they love and respect.  Two, having godly parents who actively and openly live out their faith and guide their children to do the same tends to produce the greatest results.